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Is that you, John Wayne? Is this me?

Oh, and the quote has no relevance to the post. I just like quoting Full Metal Jacket. And I wish I had an R. Lee Ermey action figure.

I said action figure, damn it!

So, what brought me to just spontaneously mention R. Lee Ermey, John Wayne, and Full Metal Jacket?

I was reading a post by Chawa at The Wayward Initiative, where she has an idea for an Achievement Title she’d like to see added to the Pilgrim holiday event… and was soliciting ideas for what you could do to earn it. 🙂

I’ll give you a minute to go over there, read the post, and then bookmark the site. With posts like that, you’ll want to go visit again, right?

Okay, let’s go.

The quote Chawa chose is pretty good. It sets up the situation… “You done caused a lot of trouble today, and you dearly deserve a solid asskicking. I’m a better man, and I’m not gonna be the one to lower myself to give it to you. Wait, you know what? On second thought, screw that, I am gonna kick your ass.”

So in what situation can we identify someone that needs an asskicking, and then proceed to kick their ass?

Of course, I immediately consider ways to pwn my own faction. If there is anything that can get a person frustrated, it’s having to deal with people being asshats on your own faction, in your pugged groups, in your Trade chat, whatever, and not being able to gank the living shit out of them.

The next thing that comes to mind is, if it’s for an Achievement during a temporary holiday, with a 7 day duration… can we get have a temporary ‘smackdown’ item or flag for them, that lets us affect our own faction?

Now, how to make sure the people that get nailed are those that deserve it.

That… that right there is the hard part, isn’t it?

After all, who determines who deserves a good asskicking?

Well, sure, me. Of course. You can trust me. 🙂

As Future Sam thought to Past Sam in Night Watch, sometimes the difference between something being right or wrong is that it’s you doing it.

Okay, that’s facetious, but when I read that, I knew what he was saying. You know what your intent is, and if you’re gonna take the law into your own hands and be a vigilante, well, you know your own motives, right? But that other bastard… who the hell knows WHAT he was thinking? He’s probably an evil, mean, nasty sumbitch, right?

Okay, it was a lot funnier when Sam thought it.

Still needs to be said… *I* may be okay with me having the power to decide who does or does not deserve an in-game asskicking… but I bet *you* aren’t.

So, who do you trust?

In World of Warcraft, we’d have to trust Blizzard’s game designers, right?

So, for there to be a judgment set up by Blizzard game designers… it has to be able to be articulated and implemented in an automatic fashion through programming.

Is it possible to build in a method by which the game can detect a behavior, and then mark the person for elimination (or bitchslapping) by players?

In Borean Tundra, those PITA types don’t like you killing animals. If you kill an animal, you get covered in blood until you enter water to wash it off. If they see you while you’re covered in animal blood, boom. They go after you.

This shows there is a mechanism in game for detecting whether someone has fulfilled a condition, and is or is not open for attack by computer controlled NPCs. Additionally, there is a built-in marking function that can be tied to the condition, so players can see it as well. It can even be set so the condition is not set by duration, but can be persistant until logout, or by fulfilling some specific condition… like being killed, or entering a water area.

Taking an example from the distant past, if you merely walk on certain areas, even in a PvE server, you get flagged instantly for PvP whether you like it or not, and that makes you wide open to attack by the opposite faction.

This means there is a mechanism in place for recognizing behavior, such as traveling in a zone, and becoming flagged for player PvP against your will.

So… is it possible to tie, say… typed chat into the triggering mechanism?

Can you, perhaps, have the chat system recognise spammed/repeated sentences or comments from a player, or frequency of comment from a player, and if someone spams Trade chat, say, with a repeated statement or with a big macro or saying, then they immediately get a big Skull placed over their head, and flagged for same-faction/any faction wide open PvP gankage?

Oh please… please, let it be so.

I know it’s too much to ask to be able to destroy a same-faction loot ninja on sight… but if someone that ports into Dalaran and starts to spam Trade were flagged and marked with a nice shiny Skull over their head, maybe for as long as 5 minutes, and could be killed by ANYONE… oh, what fun.

Do a /who, see what city they’re in, and then go hunting.

“There he is! The little bastard is hiding in the Dal sewers near the Poison seller! Get him, guys!”

Heh. How about if someone is an asshat in Dalaran, the local mages take care of it by applying a silence (preventing casting and use of any items, like parachutes) then teleport the ‘hat outside Dalaran… 500 feet of fresh air and 30 seconds or so to consider your actions…

Possibly something like the focusing lenses, where X number of people tagging the asshat get them marked and punted. Would probably need to restrict the number of people in one guild or something to prevent griefing, but if there’s a way, there’s someone who will exploit it.

I like the bounty hunter idea, although that has its drawbacks too… (dating myself here) Way back in BBS days, used to play a door game called Tradewars 2000. I was Don Carnage (Yes, from Talespin) complete with silly accent. The game allowed you to post bounties and I was famous in my area on several BBSs for being so annoying that I had the largest bounties ever. 😀 (I’d leave taunting billboards in some sectors, and randomly attack people. PIRATE, see?)

I still say that we should be able to put out “hits” on other players. Make the broker a neutral NPC, and be able to target anyone of any faction, with the caveat that they can only be targeted once every couple days or so to try to keep it from being a griefing tool. Bounty Hunter players would talk to the NPC, find a mark, and start hunting, complete with permissions to strike the target, no matter the faction or location.
.-= Tesh´s last blog ..Torchlight, Torchbright =-.

1) The debuff can only register based off global channels; i.e. General, Local Defense, Trade, Looking For Group, Say and Yell. Raid, Guild, Party and Whisper can’t count, since good natured spamming woould set it off as well.

2) A 5 minute debuff is fine, but it can only tick while they’re alive, or they’re just going to camp their own corpse until it wears off.
2a) To further force the issue, make it a forced rez once they’re debuffed: You can release, but you have 60 seconds to make it back to your corpse and pick where you want to rez, or you get force-rezzed right at you corpse, possibly in the middle of the group that just stomped you.

3) While they’re debuffed, they cannot communicate in ANY open channels, including raid, party, guild or whisper. This will prevent hem from getting a free spam pass by staying as a corpse and screaming from beyond the veil.

4) Once debuffed, all kills reduce durability, PvP or PvE. If you want them to notice, hit them in the wallet.

Good ideas, some days I really wish you could do some of them! However people would abuse a lot of them sadly. I remember when people were getting negative points for Dishonorable Kills (pre 2.0), some people actually tried to get as many as they could lol.
.-= kaozz´s last blog ..Let’s Say Thanks! =-.

I have played for both factions. There are asshats everywhere. I am amazed by those who beleive.
(A.) the other faction is made up of pre-teens that cause most of the problems. Both side can’t be made up of younger players. So should we pummel a kid for being a kid. Yes! I say if they are in the game and think they can behave badly in the game, flag em, and gank em, probably the best thing to ever happen. Plus it is often a goob who is acting like a kid, “asshat flag” pops up, get em boys.
(B.) the other faction is made up of overly agressive asshats that behave badly. I think more Horde players believe this is true. Really! I repeat there are asshats everywhere.
I would like to add a request for a new loot card that you could get from upperdeck. A Big Can of Wupass. Open it up you get muscles like popeye. It gives the user +100 to all stats against anyone anyone showing the “asshat flag”. It would work reguardless of faction. I think money could be made on that one.
One more request, if the offender gets marked for saying Anal(anything) everyone within 30 yards gets the Wupass buff. I am having a vision. We are near the fish pond in Dal, anal(something) pops up in trade, a big red skull pops up over a NE/BE, gottcha suckka, as one everyone from both factions gets a +100 Wupass buff and the elf goes down. Players of all stripes break out into dancing over the corpse of the offender. Ahhh see the smile on my face.

They could be attacked, but would not be able to attack anyone. Otherwise it would be a tool for the tools that live and breathe pvp to do more pvp and “gank” people they trap into attacking them. We are talking about smacktards, remember.